2014 in review (bullets)

I don’t really make new year’s resolutions, but I do like doing reflections. And this year was a big year. This year, I’ll focus on more quality than bullet quantity (notably, skipping the “then I spoke at this event, and this event, and taught this one…). Boiled down to my five major bullets:

Started a podcast (that I understand some people enjoy) with some of the coolest people (Len and Justin started it, and invited me). I really enjoy getting to talk with them every week, and it makes me super sad when one of us has to go right after recording, because I really just love chatting with them, making jokes, and talking about programming. Check out Turing Incomplete, and write us an iTunes review about how much you love it.

Founded and ran the first Philadelphia JavaScript conference, LibertyJS, with well over 100 attendees, planned in <6 weeks, with 3 workshop tracks and a hack day. We’re bringing it back in 2015, with more than 6 weeks of planning this time, so promised to be much more excellent. Holler if you want to sponsor.

Ran a Veg Guide launch party for The Humane League. THL puts out a fantastic veg guide every year, and I wanted it to have a corresponding celebration. We had 5 food donors (still amazed that they were kind enough to participate, please go throw money at them) and raised $1000 for The Humane League. Here’s my recap post on their Facebook page.

Rode City to Shore, raising over $500 for the MS Society. We rode the whole first day, which was about 80 miles. We drove back the next day so we could enjoy the nice weather at Ocean City (and ride the ferris wheel. Ferris Wheel!!). A wonderful charity event, definitely participating next year.

Wrote a book! Believe it or not, a year after I started, I’ve still definitely not internalized this. There’s the part that’s “well, you took on co-authors [who did an awesome job, btw], so you’re not really an author” but I need to get over that. I wrote a book! (best imagined in your head with the “I’m on a boat” tune).

And for 2015, I have big plans … the most notable of which is that I’ll be at Hacker School for Spring I, from February to May. On the speaking front, I couldn’t say no to ForwardJS, because their line-up is just killer. And in the summer, LibertyJS. I won’t touch farther than that.

Reading the last two years bullets.txt posts, I’m really really happy with this year. It’s the first year in many that I haven’t changed jobs, and because of the book, I scaled back freelance work. I believe I spent a lot more time enjoying what I have and just being happy. I went on adventures (India vacation, plus lots of other travel), and had major job accomplishments (getting into a mentorship program, shipping 2 projects (fast for enterprise), orchestrated a FOSS launch that hit HN and /r/programming front page), finishing the book (eventually). I also saw a few friends get married, saw my dad finish a half marathon, and moved to a new neighborhood that makes for much happier commutes for us. If 2015 is this good, I’ll count myself very lucky.